More Articles

Evelyn “Elaine” Bell came to Columbus City Schools in 1968. She lamented in an interview with
The Dispatch last week that she wouldn’t make it to 50 years.

Bell reluctantly resigned last week because her executive-director job at the district is being
eliminated as the new superintendent streamlines the central office.

But trying to reach 50 years wasn’t arbitrary for Bell. She had wanted to serve 25 years for
herself and 25 years for her daughter, who also was a Columbus teacher. Her daughter taught for
only a year and a half at Dana Elementary before dying of cancer. Bell said she wanted to finish
out her daughter’s years of service in her honor.

“This year they’re closing Dana,” Bell said. “The teachers there had a memorial called the Bell
Unit.”

Bell’s last day is today.

• • •

Interim Columbus school Superintendent Dan Good says the state auditor’s office is doing a
little quality control for the district.

In addition to conducting a massive, yearlong investigation into student-data manipulation in
Columbus schools, the auditor has agreed to take a look at the district’s new data practices to
make sure they’re solid, Good said last week.

The idea, he said, is to make sure that anti-cheating measures that Columbus has taken such as
limiting employee access to student data and adopting new grade-changing rules are enough to
prevent problems.

• • •

A year after he left his job as superintendent of the Gahanna-Jefferson district, Mark E. White
is back in a Franklin County school.

White was hired as the interim principal of New Albany High School, replacing Ric Stranges, who
left to become principal of Delaware Hayes High School.

White still had a year left on his contract when he left Gahanna, saying at the time that he
wanted to pursue something else in education. Since then, he also worked as interim principal at
Licking Heights High School.

In New Albany, White will be paid $110,000 under a one-year contract, about $7,000 less than
Stranges earned.

• • •

Now that summer classes are just about over, students at Capital University should finally have
received their financial aid.

Besides a statewide delay in the Ohio College Opportunity Grant –– the state’s largest college
scholarship –– there was also a delay at Capital in disbursing Pell Grant payments to students
awarded the federal, need-based grant.

The Pell Grant was delayed because, as part of a quality-control program, the university every
other year must review tax documents from 350 students to verify their need for aid, university
spokeswoman Nichole Johnson said.

There was a delay in getting the tax documents, but both the state and federal grants should now
have reached students, Johnson said.